Who Gets Us Through Illness?

If you’ve listened to that initial podcast episode, then you know our little family has been rocked with cancer, degenerative disease and illness the past few years. (Nothing like massive medical challenges to make your loss of faith a little more complicated, right? Yeesh.)

But one thing, in particular, has stood out to me during these years of questioning peppered by illness and I feel like I should apologize publicly.

Have you noticed how, when medical things go well, Christian God followers are very quick to “give Him all the glory” and such? I did it, too. Whenever we got a good report on any family member, the phrases would flow from my fingers and tongue.

“God pulled us through.”

“Without God, we’d have never made it.”

“This was ALL God.”

“He is faithful.”

“Hallelujah.”

“Praise the Lord!”

I might even spout off some scripture. “For I know the plans I have for you, saith the Lord, plans to prosper and not to harm.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

I’m sorry.

Because I realize now there are two big problems with this approach.

1. It gives God all the credit for a good outcome, but doesn’t hold Him accountable for allowing the awful circumstance of illness to begin with. (Isn’t He all-powerful? Doesn’t everything filter through His hands to His children?)
2. It robs every single human being of the praise he/she well deserves for the part he/she played in bringing about the good outcome.

This second problem is the one that really matters.

So, to the…

Oncologists

Surgeons

Registered Nurses

Orderlies

Candy Stripers

Janitors

Receptionists

Cafeteria workers

Parking attendants

Bed linen companies

Cleaning agent manufacturers

Plastic IV bag manufacturers

Needle manufacturers

Pharmacists

Pharmaceutical Companies

Organic grocers

Organic crop growers

Organic animal farmers

Gas station workers

Restaurant workers

Dog walkers

Book and magazine publishers

…to every single one of you who had a part in supplying food for sustenance, gas for transportation, pillows and linens and beds to lie in, medicines and surgeries and strategies to fight disease, entertaining things to distract us while we suffered through…

Thank you.

No one beats disease with God alone.

We get through it because you – a human – showed up. Without your part – without the ability to eat cleanly, drive to the hospital or doctor’s office, undergo surgeries, take effective medicines, and rest – disease would win every time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You are life-givers.

You are life-sustainers.

Maybe you are a Christian and you are happy to give God all the glory for you showing up and doing your job. No problemo. But you are not the only person in the story.

Perhaps you are one of those who gets discouraged and disheartened when you’ve exhausted yourself for a sick person and the Christian God is given all the credit for your work to help a patient win over a disease or illness.

Please don’t lose heart.

You are seen. You are needed. You are appreciated.

So, for whatever reason you do what you do – maybe it’s God, Allah, Krishna, Zeus, Brahma, Vishnu, or maybe it’s just your own instinctive drive to be what you’ve become – for whatever reason you do what you do…